


Past & Future

by tosca



Category: The Mummy Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:05:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca/pseuds/tosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An afternoon of discoveries for Evie, Rick and Jonathan in Evie's parents attic in England...<br/>Set between films 1 and 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past & Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miss_elizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_elizabeth/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to my lovely beta Tinnean for proofing and improving my story. Any errors or misgrammatical bits are mine.

"Evie? Honey, you up here?"

From somewhere in the interior depths there was an answering distracted hum.

Rick stepped further into the attic room, the door swinging shut behind him. The midday sunlight flooded through the narrow rooftop windows, illuminating a maze of furniture, trunks, boxes, stacks of papers, _objet_ _d'art_ , and things Rick frankly didn't have a clue what they were. The furniture were swathed in dust covers, but the sheer quantity of accumulated items piled liberally on top made the room look more like a mad antique store than a storage room.

Of his wife there was no sign.

Rick still hadn't gotten used to all this old stuff, ancient as well as somewhat more modern, Evie's family had acquired over the years. The books and butterflies – that he got. The collections of miniature Chinese temples and the stuffed kittens dressed in doll clothes however? That was just weird. Eccentric, Evie insisted. Plain nuts, was more like.

There was a small clearing near the windows, which he picked his way towards. To one side was an old gilt chaise lounge with a silk Oriental coverlet draped over the back, a faded teal-blue treasure dotted with fantastical birds sporting long curving tails, wings outspread amidst curlicues of cloud.

"Evie?"

There was the _click_ of something shutting, and then a tumble of brown curls popped up from behind the chaise lounge.

"Sweetheart, I thought we were going for a walk to the river? I didn't realise I was going to lose you to an archaeological dig in your own house."

Evie mock-scowled at him.

"Oh hush, you. Look what I've found," her voice held the wonder she usually reserved for ancient Egyptian artefacts. When she stood up however, she was holding what looked like an English tea chest – a box of dappled walnut about 18 inches square, edged with mother of pearl inlay and ornamented with silver fittings. From the way she held it the contents were not lightweight.

"Evelyn!" Rick strode over and took it from her, placing it on an occasional table situated beside the chaise. "You know you're not supposed to do any heavy lifting."

"I've been trying to find this for _ages_ ," Evie said, ignoring his comment as she scrambled over the back of the chaise, in favour of making her way around the clutter of items around it.

"Or climbing!"

Rick grabbed her by the waist to steady her and then carefully swung her to the floor. Lowering her down necessitated a great deal more bodily contact than Emily Post would have approved of, married couple or not.

"Just be careful, all right?" he asked, frowning slightly.

Evie smiled, "I'll be good," she promised and bounced up on her toes to kiss him on the nose.

Rick cupped her face and brushed a smudge of dust off her cheek with his thumb. Before he could follow through with a kiss however, she turned her head, attention distracted by her find.

"So what's in the mystery box?"

"It's not a mystery box, it's a memory box," Evie's expression was gleeful. "It belonged to my mother."

She sat on the chaise beside the occasional table and lifted the box's lid. Inside Rick could see a jumble of papers, jewellery, ribbons and buttons, shards of pottery and stone, and other mismatched bits and pieces. Bar some of the jewellery, it looked like an assortment of junk.

"This is where she put keepsakes to remind her of her most precious memories. Look," Evie plucked up a small worn stone tile, "This is from the _souq_ in Cairo, from the very night she met my father. Which really, was quite a scandalous place for her to be in the first place, let alone meeting handsome foreign gentlemen. But of course she. . . oh, and this," diverted, she picked out another item, this time a semi-circular gold pendant or earring, "This was a present from  Herr Dörpfeld, who ran the German Archaeological Institute in Athens. He was very happily married, but I think he was still a little bit in love with my mother." She giggled, and started fishing around in the box. A packet of letters wrapped in faded ribbons and leaves was set aside and a sheaf of photographs discovered beneath them. Evie flicked through the first couple, wrinkling her nose cutely (Rick thought so at any rate) as she did.

"Oh, you don't need to see those."

Rick leant over to see a picture of a baby disappear to the bottom of the stack.

"Ah, blackmail material." He sat down and enveloped Evie in a hug, plucking the photos away from her.

"Oooh, Rick!"

"Oooh, Evelyn!" He thumbed through the next few photographs, shots of places he didn't recognize, "Well, weren't you adorable," he commented on a photographs of a chubby, dark-ringleted toddler in frilly white petticoats and dress.

"Yes, Jonathan was." Evie laughed.

"That's Jonathan? He has dark hair. _Lots_ of dark hair." And a dress, but it might be better not to mention that.

"It lightened a lot as he got older." Evie was distracted by the box again, diving in and fossicking amongst the items.

Not so much different from a dig after all, Rick thought, flipping through his hoard. The stack obviously dated back to last century; carte-de-visiteand cabinet cards mixed in amongst the more modern snapshot photographs. The next one showed two people he recognized.

“Hey, this is-”

"Ow!"

Evie yanked her hand out of the box, sticking her index finger in her mouth and sucking it.

"What happened?"

Evie removed her finger, staring at it and frowning as if expecting blood. It looked a little pink, but that could have been from being sucked.

"Something bit me."

"Bit you?"

They exchanged a glance and then simultaneously bent over the box to peer inside. Nothing moved.

Evie reached in and removed a gold ring.

"I've never seen _this_ before," she said.

Up close, the ring was instantly recognizable as Egyptian, of rare pink-gold. It was a swivel ring, the top side showing the face of a lioness, inset with carnelian eyes. It was a miniature work of art, and Rick imagined it would have brought a pretty penny on the black market.

"You must have pricked yourself on the ears," Rick said.

"I suppose." Evie sounded doubtful.

She held the ring further up in the light and swivelled it. The underside bore hieroglyphs, and she squinted at them.

" _Saat Sehkmet iret Ra ahaa neser nebet nerew_ ," she said slowly, sounding out the ancient Egyptian.

"And for those of us who only know languages spoken in the last three thousand years?"

"Daughter of Sehkmet, the Eye of Ra, Great of Flames, Lady of Terror.”

“Wow. Sounds like a nice lady.”

“Well, Sehkmet was a protector goddess you know. She almost wiped out humanity on Ra's orders once. She was also the goddess of plagues, demon-banishing, doctors, and warfare."

"And beer."

"You _do_ know your gods," teased Evie.

"I know my gods of alcohol," he rebutted with a grin.

Evie turned the ring over and over, examining it closely. It really was lovely, as well as unusual, and she wondered if her mother had ever worn it. It was about the right size for her own finger in fact, and she went to slide it on.

"This is your mom and dad, right?" Rick asked, presenting a photo under her gaze. "From early in their marriage?"

Evie put the ring aside and took the photo, a shot of an English garden with her mother in a lawn day-dress and hat, smiling and wrapped in her father's embrace. It made her breath catch at how young and happy and in love her parents had been. She turned it over, reading the date on the back.

"Yes, they would have been married two years then. This was the year before Jonathan was born."

Maybe, maybe not, Rick thought, focusing on Emine Carnavan. Even from a distance of three decades he recognized the secretive curve of that smile, and the way one arm rounded loosely across her body. He looked down at his own wife, sliding an arm around her shoulders.

Evie looked up, gaze distant and dreaming. Rick leant down and kissed her, putting all his love in the sweet brush of lips on lips. Evie sighed and clutched at him, body soft and supple against his own. The warm glow of happiness liquefied into a blaze of want.

“Evie,” he groaned, pressing her down gently onto the chaise lounge.

She just smiled in reply.

 

\-----------------------------------

 

Rick soothed a hand down Evie's back as they drowsed, warm and lazy in the afterglow. He brushed his cheek against the dark soft curtain of her hair and she hummed sleepily.

"So I guess the river is a wash for today?" he asked.

"Oh, that's terrible." Evie laughed a little nonetheless.

"We did get some e-"

"Evie! Evie!" Jonathan's voice called from just outside the door.

Rick and Evie exchanged horrified glances, and called out at the same time,

"No, Jonathan, we're-"

"Jonathan, don't open the-"

The attic door was flung open and Jonathan hurried in. Rick yanked the blue silk coverlet from the back of the chaise lounge and flung it over them both, rolling on top to protect Evie from view. Unseen, a small gold object arced over the couple and disappeared into the depths of the attic.

"Evie, that awful little man is at the door ask-"

Who that awful little man was, and what he was asking went unfinished. Jonathan stopped dead, eyes bugging out and mouth falling agape.

" _Jonathan_!"

" _Dammit_ , Jonathan!"

Both hands were slapped over his face and Jonathan spun around.

"Oh my God! My eyes! My eyes!"

"OUT, Jonathan," thundered Rick.

Jonathan fled.

"Oh God, I'm scarred for life, oh God, oh God," drifting back through the door amongst the clatter of rapidly retreating footsteps.

Evie scrunched her eyes shut, blushing scarlet.

"Hey," Rick said softly. She looked up, embarrassment warring with mischief in her eyes. Rick deliberately gave his most roguish smile.

The attic filled with laughter.

 

\-----------------------------------

 

In the shadow of a roof beam, the ring of Sehkmet lay where it had fallen through the attic floorboards. The narrow crawlspace was illuminated by an unnatural crimson glow, emanating from the lioness's carnelian eyes. An intelligence, not human or animal but rather a shard of divinity, growled in ire.

She had been fed, and then cast aside.

The _ka_ of the one who had awoken Her had resonated with the purity of Maat - an ideal champion, even more so than the one who had born her and refused the office of high priestess a generation before. It was. . . annoying. But just as the sands of Her deserts were uncountable and ever-increasing, so too was the patience of the Goddess. And if not this generation either, then a daughter of the next, or the next, would accept the charge. She could wait. The lioness's red eyes flickered brightly and then faded away to stone, letting the shadows steal back.

 

\---end---

 

 

  
 **Notes**  
 **Miniature Chinese temples & Stuffed Kittens in Doll clothes**  
Yes, the Victorians really did collect those. The first I thought was amusing because of The Mummy 3, and the second just flat-out creepy.  
 **Wilhelm Dörpfeld**  
German architect and archeologist, excavated Troy with Schliemann and was responsible in great part for introducing a less destructive, more preservation-conscious style of archeology. He is considered one of the fathers of modern scientific archeology. From 1887 to 1912 he was Director of German Archaeological Institute in Athens. I'm not saying he gave Evie's mother a piece of treasure from Troy, but it's a pretty thought, isn't it?  
 **Pink gold**  
Rare red-coloured gold. Th Egyptians were particularly impressed with gold “through which blood shines”. This was usually due to the addition of iron oxide.  
 **Sekhmet**  
Goddess of protection, destruction, warfare, plague, demon-banishing, doctors, surgeouns, menustration and beer.  
 **sAt sxmt jrt rA aA nsr nb(t) nrw**  
Some of the titles of Sehkmet.  
 **Maat**  
Goddess of truth, balance, law and justice. Sekhmet was considered a protector of Maat.

 


End file.
